I am older than Hemingway, and have written more books than he has. And yet it is as much as my publishers and I can do to get people to pay even the list price for my books, to say nothing of a supplementary sum for rare copies. One of my works, Love Conquers All, is even out of print, and yet nobody shows any interest in my extra copy. I have even found autographed copies of my books in secondhand book shops, along with My Life and Times by Buffalo Bill. Doesn’t anybody care?
What is there about me and my work that repels collectors? I am handsome, in an unusual sort of way, and speak French fluently, even interspersing some of my writings with French phrases. True, some of my copy, as it goes to the printer, is not strictly orthodox in spelling and punctuation, but the proof-readers have always been very nice about it, and, by the time my books are out, there is nothing offensive to the eye about them. And yet I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author. It does seem as if people might at least take my books home with them.
If it is rarity which counts in the value of a book, I have dozens of very rare Benchley items in my room which I know cannot be duplicated. For the benefit of collectors, I will list them, leaving the price more or less up to the would-be purchaser. All that I ask is that I don’t actually lose money on the sale.
There is a copy of my first book, Of All Things, issued by Henry Holt in 1922. (Mr. Lincoln MacVeagh, who engineered the deal, is now ambassador to Greece, which ought to count for something.) It is a first edition, an author’s copy, in fact, and has a genuine tumbler-ring on the cover. I have no doubt that it is actually the first volume of mine ever to be issued, and, as Of All Things has gradually gone into twelve editions since, it ought to be very valuable. Page 29 is dog-eared.
Love Conquers All (Holt, 1923) is, as I have said, now out of print, which makes my extra copy almost unique. I doubt very much if anyone else has an extra copy of Love Conquers All. It is a third edition, which may detract a little from its market value, but this is compensated for by the fact that it belonged originally to Dorothy Parker, who left it at my house five or six years ago and has never felt the need for picking it up. So, you see, it is really a Dorothy Parker item, too.
Pluck and Luck (Holt, 1924) was brought out later in a dollar edition for drugstore sale, and I have three of those in a fair state of preservation. One of them is a very interesting find for collectors, as I had started to inscribe it to Donald Ogden Stewart and then realized that I had spelled the name “Stuart,” necessitating the abandonment of the whole venture. It is practically certain that there is not another dollar edition of Pluck and Luck with Donald Ogden Stewart’s name spelled “Stuart” on the fly-leaf. Would a dollar and a quarter be too much to ask, do you think?
Faulty inscriptions account for most of the extra copies of The Early Worm (Holt, 1926) that I have lying about. It was during that period, and that of my next book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, or David Copperfield (Holt, 1928), that I went through a phase of trying to write humorous remarks on the fly-leaves of gift copies. Those copies in which the remarks did not turn out to be so humorous as I had planned had to be put aside. I have eighteen or twenty of these discarded copies, each with an inscription which is either unfunny or misspelled.
During what I call “my transitional period,” when I changed from Henry Holt to Harper’s and began putting on weight, I was moody and fretful, and so did not feel like trying to make wisecracks in my inscriptions. The recipient of a book was lucky if I even took the trouble to write his name in it. He was lucky, indeed, if he could read my name, for it was then that I was bullied into autographing copies at book-shop teas (this was my transitional period, you must remember, and I was not myself ), and my handwriting deteriorated into a mere series of wavy lines, like static.
For this reason, I have not so many curious copies of The Treasurer’sReport and No Poems hanging about. I have, however, a dummy of The Treasurer’s Report with each page blank, and many of my friends insist that it should be worth much more than the final product. I don’t know just how dummy copies rate as collectors’ items, but I will be very glad to copy the entire text into it longhand for fifty dollars. Thirty-five dollars, then.
And now I come to what I consider the choicest item of them all—one which would shape up rather impressively in a glass case a hundred years from now. It is a complete set of corrected galleys for my next book (to be called, I am afraid, From Bed to Worse), which I had cut up for rearrangement before I realized that I was cutting up the wrong set of proofs—the one that the printer wants back. I haven’t broken the news to the printer at Harper’s, and I may never get up the courage to do so (printers get so cross), in which case the book will never come out at all. Would that be a valuable piece of property or not—a set of hand-corrected galleys for a Benchley item which never was published? And all cut up into little sections, too! A veritable treasure, I would call it, although possibly the words might come better from somebody else.
But, until the collecting public comes to its senses, I seem to be saddled, not only with a set of mutilated galleys, but about twenty-five rare copies of my earlier works, each unique in its way. Possibly Hemingway would like them in return for the two books of his own that he has gone to so much trouble to render unsaleable for me.
How Not to Care for Books
BY HOLBROOK JACKSON
The name Holbrook Jackson has been associated with bibliomania since the 1930 publication of his masterwork, Anatomy of Bibliomania— recently republished under the title The Book about Books. Jackson collected and organized material from an incredible range of world literature,assembling virtually everything written about books until his day (which explains the archaic spelling in many of his quotations). This section is about the abuse of books.
Next to persecutors, if I may distinguish them, are those neglectors, irreverent of careless handlers, bullies of books, who are not far behind them as destroyers. Swift compared libraries to cemeteries and as some authorities affirm that a spirit hovers over the monuments of the dead till the bodies are corrupted and turned to dust, so he believed a like restless spirit haunted every book, till dust or worms seized upon it. Alas! exclaims Janin, ’tis no wonder that these miracles of the printers are priceless, for before reaching us they have escaped so many dangers, confronted so many obstacles: unhealthy homes, damp cellars, either too hot or too cold; fire and water. When Leland visited Oxford after the suppression of the monasteries, he found few books, only moths and beetles swarming over the empty shelves. It was no better at Cambridge, even in more recent times. Nothing, says Bradshaw, could be more disgraceful than the way in which the manuscripts of Bishop Moore’s library, presented to the University by George I, were literally shovelled into their places; and for the thirty-five years that followed the presentation the pillage was so unlimited that the only wonder is that we have any valuable books left. Every library, especially those that are old and large, or small and neglected, breeds its own inimical flora and fauna, mould, bookworms, moths, anthrene, vorilette, bugs, mice, rats, the story of whose devastations would fell many volumes. In addition Janin enumerates such enemies as dust, children, kittens, hot greasy hands, les sales mains d’Hermogenes, and finally, les imbeciles et les brigands qui di tiennent autour des trones, an changant la chanson:
Eteignons les lumieres,
Et rallumons le feu . . .
Let’s put out the lights,
And stoke up the fire . . .
Many authorities support him, extending his catalogue, as William Blades, who would add gas, bookbinders, houseflies, bugs, black-beetles, and servants; upon all of which he dilates at large. Rats and mice have doubtless browsed on books, growing fat if not wise. But sometimes their gnawings have been frustrated, as in that example, recorded by Bernard Shaw, of the MS. of his own first novel, Immaturity, which, rejected by publishers, lay neglected until part of it was devoured by mice th
ough even they had not been able to finish it; but tough or tender, mice have no respect for either genius or masterpiece:
Ho, ho! Master Mouse! safe at last in my cage
You’re caught, and there’s nothing shall save you from dying:
For, caitiff! you nibbled and tore Shakespeare’s page,
When close by your nose Tupper’s nonsense was lying.
Because these enemies of books are so malign in themselves, and so hard to be removed, prevention is better than cure; and the best averter of such rebellious carriers of destruction is wise and constant use. When Sir Thomas Bodley was told by his Librarian James that some of his books were infested with worms, he replied: I hope those little worms about the covers of your books come by reason of their newness,and that hereafter they will away. For more to this end, see my Digression of Bookworms.
Most of these misfortunes come by neglect, which is in itself a negative ill-usage. All those misaffections which I have named are as weeds in the garden of books; dust, mould, maggots, bugs, moths, beetles, and the like are the zymotic diseases of books, and as devastating as the perils of direct attack and abuse. Petrarch gave a collection of books to the city of Venice, but many years afterwards they were found rotting away in a cellar: some had become mere dust, others were agglutinated by the damp into formless masses, but a few survived and are still preserved in the Ducal palace. The Library of Monte Cassino survived the desecrations of Lombard and Saracen only to rush destruction from neglect. When Boccaccio visited the monastery he found noble manuscripts scattered and disordered in a doorless loft reached by a ladder. The books were white with dust and whole sheets had been ripped out and margins cut away. Boccaccio wept at the sight and demanded of a monk how such precious volumes had been so ill-used. He was told that the brethren needed money and would cut out enough leaves from a Bible to make a little Psalter, which they would sell, and they raised more revenue by disposing of the blank margins for use as “briefs.”
Yet dust, according to some authorities, is not in itself so damaging to books as the act of dusting them by unskillful or irreverent performers. Both Blades and Birrell stiffly maintain that you should never dust books; let the dust lie until the rare hour arrives when you want to read a particular volume; then warily, Birrell advises, approach it with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome. Blades has a terror of careless servants and rampant housewives conducting a Spring offensive, and if he admits that books must now and then be taken out of their shelves, they should be tended lovingly and with judgment,and he agrees with Birrell that if dusting can be done just outsidethe room so much the better. I am with these reliable authorities in both their strictures and advice, but neither they nor I are ignorant of the fact that it is not only frenzied domesticity which desecrates our temples in pursuit of dust; bookmen themselves are often perverse offenders, and not least among them our learned Dr. Johnson, as I have shown, but I will again recount the story for a caution, this time out of Birrell. When about to dust his books the Doctor drew on huge gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and bu feted them togetheruntil he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. This violent exercise over, the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered, and bruised, to their places, where of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily as possible.It is the good fortune of books that such methods have been superseded by the invention of that ingenious engine called the vacuum cleaner, although I must not omit to mention that cleanliness does not satisfy all bookmen, for there are some who regard dust on books as a mark of age, and therefore of distinction, much as connoisseurs will preserve with tender care the grimy encrustations on a bottle of an ancient and honourable wine. Such enthusiasts as these consider the dust of the library, together with that of the crematorium and of the churchyard, as a measure sacred.
But abuse more direct and deliberate has been as common in most times, from their use as a packing or tinder to the indignity of sanitary necessity, for although Gargantua discommends paper, and books as such are not named in his famous torcheculatif, their use in this wise is historically established and has become a byword in French coprology. Avisez-y, doctes: parce que souvent d’espice, ou des mouchoirs de cul. There are those also, as that old English aphorist, who go so far as to class the writer of abundance of Books with the begetter of abundance of Children, as a Benefactor of the Public, because he furnishes it with Bumfodder and Soldiers. I must perforce be indefinite in such a record, so shall only add one instance in which Carew Hazlitt tells us that not so long since, a copy of Caxton’s Recuyellof the Hystoryes of Troye was found hanging up in a water-closet at Harrogate; part of it had already been consumed, but the remainder was rescued and sold to a dealer in Manchester for thirty pounds. Many times rashly and unadvisedly are good books destined to an indignity which might be deemed infamous and ridiculous for even a newspaper, and if I were disposed to enlarge this theme, here might easily be recalled many unsavoury tales from our own early literature, and I would go on with it, but as Grangousier advised Gargantua, it is a dull theme, so to wander on would be no joke, the curious in such business may look for more in Thomas Dekker, his Gul’s Horn-Booke, Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, Swift, etc.
As martyrs of pies and victims of economy books have a long and tragical history. To recount how many have been so destroyed would make a long list. They have suffered I know not what in this wise; but I can give no more than a taste, as the example which Macray gives out of the notes of Rawlingson how that collector came by many rare documents which had been disposed of as rubbish. I lately rescued from the grocers, chandlers, etc., he records, in 1755, a parcel of papers once the property of Compton and Robinson, successively Bishops of London; amongst them remarkable intelligences relating to Burnet and the Orange Court in Holland in those extraordinary times before 1688; and letters from Bolingbroke, Oxford, Ormonde, Strafford, Prior, and the Elector and Electress of Hanover. At another time, from a shop whether they had been sentenced to serve for supporting pyes, currents, sugar, etc., he redeemed as many as came to 12s. at 6d. per pound. These included a collection of ecclesiastical causes, and the causes of Bishop Watson and the Duchess of Cleveland.
The history of books teems with such accounts, not only from past ages but from nearer our own times. The letters which James Boswell addressed to his friend the Rev. William Temple were discovered, about the middle of last century, by a clergyman, in the shop of a Madame Noel, at Boulogne. He observed that the article he had bought was wrapped in a piece of paper bearing English writing. His interest was aroused, and upon examination the paper proved to be part of a letter written by the biographer of Dr. Johnson. He made further inquiries and discovered a goodly parcel of letters by the same hand which Madame Noel had purchased from a hawker, who passed through that seaport twice a year supplying the tradesfolk with wrapping paper. The clergyman immediately secured the whole parcel, and the letters are now among the treasures of our epistolary literature. Another such rescue from the paw of the shopkeeper had a curious issue, if the tale D’Israeli tells of Barbosa, Bishop of Ugento, be true. In the year 1649, that ecclesiastic printed among his works a treatise, called de Officio Episcopi, which he obtained by having perceived one of his domestics bring in a fish rolled in a piece of paper which his curiosity led him to examine. His interest was immediately provoked and he ran out and searched the fish market until he found and secured the MS. from which the sheet had been torn.
Now and again in other circumstances of time and place whole libraries have been left to the risk of adventitious events, and some have suffered no further damage than dispersal, as the library formed by Edward Gibbon at Lausanne for the writing of his history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mary Berry tells how she saw this library when she visited that city, in 1803, where it still remained, although, as I have shown in its place, it had been bought by Beckford
seven years earlier. It is, she says, of all libraries I ever saw, that of which I should most covet the possession; that which seems exactly everything that any gentleman or gentlewoman fond of letters could wish. The books were under the care of a Mr. Scholl, a physician of that place, and were all clean and in good condition. Several years before Beckford had packed up 2,500 out of 10,000 volumes, intending to send them to England, but they still remained there in their cases. In 1818 they were seen by another traveler, Henry Matthews, locked up in an uninhabited house. In 1825, Birkbeck Hill records, half of them were sold by Dr. Scholl (to whom Beckford eventually gave them) to Mr. Halliday, an Englishman, who lived in a tower near Orbe. The remainder were dispersed, some going to America, but many volumes were still in the possession of a resident of Geneva as lately as the year 1876, though I can find no record of them after that date.
Richard de Bury fulminates in a whole chapter of his Philobiblon against the careless abusers of books in his time: as a youthful student lounging over his studies, when the winter’s frost is sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold and dripping down and unwiped until he has bedewed the book before him with ugly moisture; another marks passages with the fetid black filth of his nails, and distributing straws between the pages so that the halm may remind him of what his memorycannot retain, thus distending the book from its wonted closing. Such abusers, he says, do not fear to eat fruit or cheese over the open pages, or to carry a cup to their mouths over them, dropping into the book crumbs and spots of liquid. They wet the pages with splutteringshowers from their lips as they dispute with their companions, and when they pause in their studies to take a nap they fold their arms and sleep upon the book, crumpling the leaves, and then seek to mend them, to their further damage, by folding them back. When the rain is over and gone, and the flowers appear on the earth, they will sally forth and stuff their volumes with violets, and primroses,with roses and quatrefoil. They will use wet and perspiring hands to turn over pages; thumb white vellum with gloves covered with dirt: with fingers clad in long-used leather will hunt line by line through the pages; throw them aside unclosed so that they get full of dust; make notes and other inky exercises in their margins.
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